Tue EvIDENCE FROM PREHISTORIC CORN 
If pod corn is the ancestral type, it should occur in 
some collections of prehistoric corn and possibly in rep- 
resentations on prehistoric pottery. It was while search- 
ing for such representations that we discovered in the 
Peabody Museum of Yale University a ceramic specimen 
which we described some years ago as possibly being pod 
corn (17). We also illustrated a second specimen from 
the same museum which might be so interpreted. Since 
then, we have seen ceramic replicas which might repre- 
sent pod corn in the Museum of the University of Penn- 
sylvania and in the Museum of the University of Cuzco 
in Peru. Two of the latter are illustrated by Weather- 
wax (30, Fig. 44). 
Weatherwax (30) doubts that the Peabody Museum 
specimens represent pod corn and suggests that they are 
replicas or even casts* made from nontunicate ears whose 
overlapping grains have long, attenuated tips. He illus- 
trates such an ear (80) and suggests that it might have 
served as a model for the prehistoric ceramic specimens. 
Weatherwax has overlooked an important difference 
between one of the ceramic replicas and the modern Peru- 
vian ear with imbricated kernels—the variation in length 
of the individual units. The glumes of pod corn are usu- 
ally longest at the base of the ear and become progres- 
sively shorter toward the tip. This is well illustrated in 
Weatherwax’s Fig. 51 (lower center) which shows vari- 
ation in the spikelets of a single ear of pod corn. ‘This 
same kind of variation is exhibited in some degree in the 
units of the prehistoric ceramic replica but it is conspicu- 
ously absent in the kernels of the modern Peruvian ear 
(cf. Weatherwax, Fig. 51, upper left, center and right). 
’ There is no possibility of making a realistic representation of over- 
lapping kernels from the cast of an ear; each kernel must be fash- 
ioned separately and inserted in its proper place. 
[ 343 ] 
